Frankly, we’re shocked at how easy this hack is. [Kubbur87] puts the device into developer mode, enables SSH, and then goes to work on the Linux shell within. It seems the only line of protection is the root password which he somehow acquired.

After the break you’ll find his videos which show how to enable developer mode and how to perform this hack. By putting a file named “ENABLE_DIAGS” with no extension on the device when it is recognized as a USB storage device you’ll gain access to the diagnostic menu system. From there it’s just a matter of cruising that menu to get SSH access. Like we said, you’ll need the root password, that that’s as easy as naming your favorite video game character from the 1980’s.

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94 thoughts on “Custom screensaver on the non-touch Kindle 4”

So amazon set the root password to “mario”??? That’s not even a long password. I would expect a bunch of random numbers and letters. I mean seriously that’s the most secure thing they could come up with?

the administrator password for all of the computers, and the root password for all of the switches/routers on the network at my highschool was ‘wintergreen.’ and it’s not even a small school district; my graduating class was 900 students.

Cheaper, smaller, 4 page-turn buttons, appears as a USB storage device (where you can upload any books you want just by copying them there), and there’s even a nice “screensaver” image folder built-in.

I realized that as well, but not until I had restarted my kindle several times over, constantly going into the filesystem of the kindle to figure out how to remove the “special offers”. Maybe next time.

Hi, this method was successful. It seem to work even when I’m on line- no ads were downloaded.

One thing bothers me- Before using this method I already had created “screen_saver” and had two pictures in it. After using Your method these pics were seen as screen savers. When I added some new pics to this folder, they didn’t show up as screen savers.
What I did was repeating whole thing with your method, and now all the pictures that were in “screen_savers” are used as they should be :D

Dear All,
I can do it upto SSH and got root reply, but the password really tripped me a lot: it replied me “access denied” all the time after I input password. I got password “fionaldef” for my serial number “1331440003” from Putty, and the website mentioned above as well, but it seems it was wrong or something else I did not do it right?

did you restart the kindle after putting the pictures on it ?
restarting means going to the settings menu, pressing the alternative menu button and highlighting restart and pressing the middle way button

I “restart” several time but in vain, the sreen still showed “blank” when Kindle slept or I pushed the power button.

Let me make sure one thing I was doing right or wrong: after SSH and write in those commands shown in your video, I leave diagnostic mode and restart Kindle, then it showed a “screensaver” folder under Kindle, on my Windows screen. Then I drop in .PNG file into the folder, then I restart Kindle. Is the procedure right?

>>did you restart the kindle after putting the pictures on it ?
restarting means going to the settings menu, pressing the alternative menu button and highlighting restart and pressing the middle way button

I “restart” several time but in vain, the sreen still showed “blank” when Kindle slept or I pushed the power button.

Let me make sure one thing I was doing right or wrong: after SSH and write in those commands shown in your video, I leave diagnostic mode and restart Kindle, then it showed a “screensaver” folder under Kindle, on my Windows screen. Then I drop in .PNG file into the folder, then I restart Kindle. Is the procedure right?

I’ve had good success with the screensaver hack. However, I notice that now the screensavers don’t transition through the images. A new image only shows up after you take it out and put it back into screensaver mode. Is there any way to set a transition timer for it to go through the photos in the folder?

So, this worked great, but now I’m in a bind. I have a small scratch on the surface, and I want to swap it out before the warranty is up. Is there a reverse to this? I thought the factory reset would work, but it didn’t. Now, instead of custom screensavers, I’ve got blank white?

delete the screensaver folder and then
go back to console and remove the 600×800 folder, then rename the 600×800.old to 600×800 and you should be fine
command for remove a folder is rm -r “folder”
command for rename is mv “/pathtofolder/folder.old” “/pathtofolder/folder”
all this without quotas

Thank you for responding. I tried doing this a couple times before giving up. I’m just now seeing that the reason I was having difficulties was because the backup folder was created wrong. In the pastebin.com raw data, the 4th step shows up as two lines, so it created a folder called /mnt/base-

I deleted linked 600×800 folder and made another 600×800 folder, then I copied all the new .png files I want into this new folder, with the file name coding 01N, 02N2, 03N2, 04N, 05N……as original screensaver files.

Then it worked!!

Note it is really a SSH work, but that is not so difficult as I thought before.

If you have access to a *nix shell, whether that’s a Linux/BSD box, a Mac, or even an Android phone with local shell, here’s a script to find the password for a Kindle 4 Non-Touch. Just change the second line so that the value of $serno is your Kindle’s serial number.

WELL…I GOT A CHALLENGE FOR YOU UNLIKE ANY OTHER. I GOT A “STORE MODEL” KINDLE DX DEMO. AND IT ONLY PLAYS THE “DEMO SCREEN” OVER AND OVER AGAIN… HOW CAN I GET IT TO BE A REGULAR KINDLE DX AGAIN AND GET THE “DEMO MODE” OFF?? NOBODY…I MEAN NOBODY HAS BEEN ABLE TO FIGURE IT OUT. ARE YOU GOOD ENOUGH TO HELP ME WITH IT?? I WILL BE VERY HAPPY IF YOU CAN!

ACTUALLY, IM SORRY, BUT MY CAPS BUTTON IS STUCK. EMBARRASSING, YES. DONT WORRY IM NOT TRYING TO BE RUDE WITH CAPS ALL THE TIME. I SHOULD BE GETTING MY NEW ON IN THE MAIL SOON. BUT THANK YOU FOR RESPONDING TO ME. I REALLY APRECIATE IT. BUT ANYWAYS, YEA, IS THERE SOME KIND OF ‘FORCE OVERIDDE” THAT YOU CAN LINK ME TO SO I CAN WIPE EVEN THE FIRMWARE THATS ON IT AND THEN RE INSTALL THE SOFTWARE?

So I have done the hack and get my screen savers to come up when I hit the button. When I go to register with my account it replaces them with the ads and I can’t get them back (I am sure I can reset to factory defaults and do everything again if I need to).

Is there a way to have custom screensavers and register to make buying books easy? or will I have to download purchased books to computer and then transfer them that way.

Any1 help me too? I can’t even get in diag mode… I edit the diag thing in the kindle root then go to settings and restart. then nothing happens. it just restarts as it should. the video doesn’t explain much. Am I doing it wrong?

Bummer, I followed the instructions and get a white screen. I saw the answer to the other person who got the white screen, but I am new to putty and have no idea how to delete and replace lines of code. I am now stuck with a white screen kindle, or can restore back to the ads. I appreciate the instructions, but I wish it was correct straight from the beginning. I have a beautiful star trek screen I wanted to use.

This tutorial ERASE all the files necessary to Kindle screensaving, so be careful. Do a copy in your computer before playing with your Kindle. Even I was unable to restore the files by doing a firmware update, ´cause my Kindle is in the last update and doesn´t permit upgrades to it.

Erase? It’s only “make directory”, “rename” and “create link” commands, they can’t erase anything! It shows you to enter the mode when you can erase important files all right, but if followed verbatim it does not delete anything from your Kindle. “Backup files” is always good advice none the less.

Thanks, but it doesn’t work, at leaste on my kindle. When i type
unlink /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600×800
it says -sh: unlink not found
and when i type the other command, it says “no such file or directory”.
I am afraid i wrecked up something O.o

instead of unlink, since kindle doesn’t know unlink.
But don’t do this unless you can also do the next step (if you have already done this, the ln command from the tutorial will undo this).

And now to the second step:

did you already move the folder into your custom-screensaver folder? look if it is there And tell me. (If you executed the second command before the first (or after the first one failed), you may have moved it there ;) )

did you use another tutorial? If yes, can you give me a link?
use

ls /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/

to get a list of files/directories in this directory. Is there anything that looks like a backup of the original screensavers? the “adunits” (or similar) folder is unimportant here.

Or: where did you move the original folder? (tell me how the mv command you used looked like)

Just to tell you what you’re even doing ;)

ln arg0 arg1
arg0 is an existing file or folder, arg1 a non-existing one.
creates a link from arg1 to arg0

rm arg0
removes/deletes arg0

mv arg0 arg1
arg0 is an existing file folder
if arg1 is a folder: moves arg0 into this folder
otherwise it will move arg0 to arg1 (and overwrite an existing file)

As i tought i screwed something. When i list the resources in the screen_saver folder, there is only the adunits foder, and nothing else. Maybe i managed to delete the old screensavers? Can i do something to fix it?

Find them in the internet (or somewhere else).
Make sure that they are complete and unchanged (I think the update procedure checks your device for modifications, and when it detects the custom screensavers, it is cancelled)

copy them to your kindle (plug it in in normal mode, like you would copy your custom screensavers) into a new folder (e.g. a new folder named “orig_screensavers”

I have the same problem, but none of the passwords will work any more, mario worked when i first did the hack, but now it doesn’t, and neither does the one that that website provided after putting in my serial code. Help Please!

Hmm…
Trying to remove hack to upgrade sw from 4.0.1 to 4.1, but the host password appears to have changed.

I’m sure that it was ‘mario’ when I applied hack, but that no longer works.
Tried the serial-number-generator, but the ‘fionaxxx’ passwords aren’t working either. (tried using the serial no on box & a different one under ‘settings’ on kindle itself)

2. If you still have the .old folder, do the mv /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600×800.old /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600×800 command. Make sure to take care when copying and pasting commands, as my putty client replaces Xs with ?s.

4. Do a ls /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/ command to see what files are there. If you have 800×600 and adunits, that’s fine. If your 800×600 file has vanished (like mine!) do a mkdir /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600×800 command to make it. Fill this folder with the images in step 3, by doing cp -r /mnt/us/>>FILENAME<>IMAGENAME<< /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600×800 for each image. When I did the move command for a folder, it just slapped the folder into the destination folder, which is no use. If you know a better way, use it!

Basically, the ideal solution is to have ls /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/ report back '800×600' and 'adunits', and ls /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/800×600 to report back all the files from the link above with their correct names. If any directories exist which are weird, use rm -r -f <> to get rid of them.

Will any of this work with 4.1? I’m reluctant to try until I hear of some successes. Also, the root password generator page doesn’t have a listing for 4.1, so I don’t know if the generated password will work.

Can you please give more info? I used this hack when I first got my kindle, and I want to do the software update, and remove the hack, but I don’t know how. Also it appears that the root password has changed since I did the hack, is that possible?

For linux users trying to ssh into the kindle 4, assign the ip via ifconfig to usb0. For me to get it to work (after trying all the basic approaches) I needed to put the desired wallpapers directly into a real folder (not symlink) located at /mnt/base-mmc/opt/amazon/screen_saver/600×800. The symlink wouldn’t work – someone else mentioned this in the comments and that tipped me off, but I thought I’d explicitly second this approach.